


Falling's Not the Problem, When I'm Falling I'm at Peace (It's Only When I Hit the Ground That Causes All the Grief)

by Tesseractingrey



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clexa Week 2021, F/F, Inspired by Good Omens, Light Angst, Magic, Magical Realism, Oh also, Philosophical ramblings, and how i'm choosing the fulfill today's prompt bc i'm a nerd, i've just borrowed some ideas mostly, not a good omens au though, on the topic of falling, that's the divergence, that's the writing style, they have wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29915043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tesseractingrey/pseuds/Tesseractingrey
Summary: There was a story of a girl from soon after the day the world ended with flaming hair and icy eyes, pure white wings sprouting from her shoulder blades.  She had been a healer, as the legend went, traveling around to save the lives of those not yet dead from the bombs.All the stories are true.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: Clexaweek2021





	Falling's Not the Problem, When I'm Falling I'm at Peace (It's Only When I Hit the Ground That Causes All the Grief)

**Author's Note:**

> This is definitely the most serious thing I've written for Clexa Week, but also the thing that was rattling around in my head for the longest and the thing that wanted to come out the most. It's not like anything else I've written for this, but I'm actually pretty proud of how it turned out.

Lexa didn’t have any memories of her parents or the village where she was born, and no one had ever told her about them. Her earliest memories are of Polis, of Titus and Sanya and Arlox and her fellow natblidas. Arlox died when Lexa was still young, so her memories of him are the most sparse: they solely consisted of speeches she was forced to listen to quietly instead of playing and stories he told them about what it was like to be Heda. None made the position seem especially appealing.

It was tradition for parents to tell their children stories of the old world, passing down bits and pieces of knowledge of what life was like and parts of myths mixed together so thoroughly that Lexa could never tell what was really true. Sanya was the one telling the natblidas stories before bed to calm their racing minds and muscles twitching with a desire to run and climb trees, though, not Titus. She was the one who cared for the children too young to be able to be self sufficient and too clumsy to wield any kind of weapon without significant risk of injury yet, while Titus drilled the older children. He did come in at the end of every day to lecture them on the most important things that Heda must know, but although they were a well-behaved group, one can only expect so much from 4-year-olds. The one teaching that had stuck with Lexa since then, sinking in early instead of around the age of 10 when the rest did, was one that took her the longest time to truly understand.

“All the stories are true.”

The stories that Sanya told them were of long gone cities and gods and fallen angels and Lexa wasn’t sure how they could be true until one day, a star fell from the sky.

———

A long time ago, some humans believed that a group of angels fell from heaven because they defied God. A few minutes ago, a rider from Anya had arrived with the message that a group of children had crashed to the ground. Delinquents, cast out by their parents, according to the early reports from what the scouts had overheard. And Lexa understood.

There was a saying in the old world: “life imitates art.” The intention of the long-forgotten author had been to say that one’s view of the world was colored by what artists taught them to seek out, that people took actions inspired by works of art because they wished for their lives to be closer to the perfection of a work of art, that art more often portrayed the world humans wanted than the one they had. Whether or not that or the reverse was more true had been a popular philosophical debate in the old world, but either way, all the stories were true. Stories were written about true events and inspired true events and regardless of if the chicken or the egg came first, they were all true. Perhaps not all events were strictly accurate, but the spirit of the tales was, and that’s what mattered. The emotions and desires in any work of art were the truth that viewers were always most drawn to.

Lexa had always been drawn to the story of the fallen angels, and she found herself equally drawn to these fallen children. They were invading her territory, killing her people, and yet there was still an unbreakable pull of curiosity towards them. Or towards one in particular, at least. Their leader, she learned, was named Clarke.

There was a story about Clarke, one being passed through her people with whispers of “could it be?” There was a story of a girl from soon after the day the world ended with flaming hair and icy eyes, pure white wings sprouting from her shoulder blades. She had been a healer, as the legend went, traveling around to save the lives of those not yet dead from the bombs. Those touched by her bore a mark of three interlocking rings at the nape of their neck, said to represent life, death, and the inconceivable, a mark passed onto all of their descendants. A fair number of people today bore the mark, but it could be chalked up to simply a heritable birthmark; there was no way to truly validate the story. However, all the stories were true. No one had ever had an ending to the story of the mysterious healer, but now they whispered about Clarke and her flaming hair and her icy eyes and her skill as a healer.

Lexa herself did not bear the mark, but that was because Heda could not, so neither could any natblida. Heda had a mark of their own, the cogwheel that sat on their forehead, that marked the killing blows they dealt. The symbol was meant to represent that Lexa was only part of what Heda truly was, and that time and death would always roll forwards, brutally and unceasingly. Any healer knew to look for the mark of Heda before attempting to save someone, because some people were beyond saving. Heda was meant to kill, not to heal.

———

More stars dropped from the sky, and the number of sky people on Earth multiplied more than tenfold. But there were no angels among them; all were fallen. All disliked their current way of life, and wanted to make a new one. Perhaps to be in heaven was to be content, and to fall was to _want._ Was wanting a bad thing?

———

The day she met Clarke, she knew the stories were true. And not just true in spirit, but in reality: only the heir to Wanheda’s spirit and power could look Heda in the eye, unflinching, and announce that she’d escaped the mountain alive. Lexa could see a healthy mix of fear and respect in her eyes, but the set of her jaw and her careful body language only showed determination. She didn’t have the reckless disregard for Heda’s authority that the other Skaikru she’d met seemed to, but she didn’t have the reverence of Lexa’s own people either. It was a recognition of the danger Lexa posed, but a decision to push forwards anyways. Not even Anya had ever dared to be so bold with Lexa after her Ascension.

Her hair was dirty, but still akin to the violent light of the sun, and her eyes were closer to the ocean than ice, but still as piercingly blue as the legend claimed. The only thing truly missing was the wings. As Lexa stepped closer to Clarke, her own wings, black as the void, stretched behind her. But Clarke didn’t break eye contact for a second, not in submission nor to examine the famed wings of Heda, which burst from their shoulder blades as they took on the Flame.

They could be used for flight, but Titus had trained the desire for cavorting thoroughly out of the natblidas long before the Conclave, so Heda rarely flew. Lexa had tested her wings the night she’d gotten them, but ever since, had used them solely for threatening enemies and reminding allies of her power, like she was supposed to. Most of the time, they were folded carefully under her cloak to avoid making herself a bigger target, but the picture of Heda in her true form was a useful one to paint for intimidation. There was no real purpose to flight itself besides fun, and Heda had more important things to do than have fun.

But Lexa wasn’t concerned with Clarke’s lack of wings, because she just claimed she could heal Reapers. Indra didn’t believe the legends, but Lexa knew better. All the stories were true, and no one but Wanheda could bring back those lost to the Mountain’s corruption.

———

When Clarke walked away from the Mountain, her people wordlessly trailing behind her, wings slowly sprouted from her back like a flower, finally blooming. They weren’t the famed pure white of the legend, though. They were black feathers too, arcing through the white, but the swirling patterns of imperfection only made them look all the more impressive. She walked with a face of stone, leading her people home, not flinching in the face of what Lexa knew was incredible pain. Growing a new limb wasn’t easy, after all. Lexa had been trained for the experience by Titus, from knowledge passed from Fleimkepa to Fleimkepa after the second Heda got wings along with the Flame, to the shock of everyone watching. According to the stories, the first commander had wings before she got the Flame, before she fell to Earth, so she hadn’t expected them to be passed down as well. But even the second commander had the first for guidance, and Lexa had the voices of the 32 commanders before her along with Titus’ training. Clarke had absolutely nothing, and she didn’t flinch.

Clarke’s people stared at her in awe, but she didn’t stay. Once she’d gotten them home, she’d given her new wings a try, and disappeared into the sky. Lexa hadn’t seen any of this, though. She’d left Clarke at the Mountain, so she’d only heard about the birth of Wanheda through stories passed on to her from others.

———

The next time Lexa saw her, it was over a month after the Mountain had fallen, staring out the window in her bedroom, looking at Polis and searching for sleep in its silent peace. She saw something passing through the sky, a bit beyond the edge of the city, bigger than a bird, and was jumping out her window, wings spread wide, before she could even think to question if this was a good idea or not. She was the commander of the twelve clans, had only flown once in her life, and had just jumped off the top of her very tall tower to follow a girl without a second thought.

Lexa was skilled at a great many things, but flying, as it was becoming painfully clear, was not one of them. She was only able to keep up because Clarke was letting her follow, making big, looping swirls through the air to give Lexa enough time to unsteadily flap along behind her in a straight line. The first time Lexa flew, she was happy just to be in the air, her back muscles strong enough to keep her from falling, even if she couldn’t move very quickly. She had to imagine that Clarke had needed to practice for a while to get to this point of skill instead of just mere intuition keeping her aloft, but Lexa couldn’t help the stab of jealousy at the way the girl in front of her arced through the air with joy on her face.

Clarke seemed to know that Lexa wouldn’t be able to fly for long — no matter how strong her back muscles were, they weren’t trained for flight, and soon, they would tire from inexperience. After only a couple minutes of flying, she slowed down, hovering over the forest, wings flapping lazily to keep herself aloft. Lexa landed, somewhat ungracefully but definitely gratefully, on the top branch of the tallest tree she could find. Her pride wanted her to stay in the air, not allowing Clarke to be higher than her, but it would be unwise to not take a rest. As expected, Clarke didn’t come closer, but also didn’t leave her behind, instead looping casually through the air, as if showing off her flight skills.

Lexa just watched for a minute or two, unsure of what to say, unsure why Clarke had let her come here. What were you supposed to say to the girl you’d kissed once, the girl you’d betrayed, the girl of a legend? Luckily, Clarke did seem to have a purpose for this conversation.

“You need to send a messenger to tell the Skaikru to tell them that the truce will continue. They’re scared and unsure of where they stand.” The Skaikru. Them. A group Clarke no longer considered herself truly part of, and yet was still trying to protect.

“...Okay.” What else could she say? Lexa mentally berated herself for not thinking of it earlier; of course they would worry that Lexa walking away from them at the Mountain meant walking away from their cooperation altogether.

“It’s not your fault you didn’t think of it earlier; you and your people have been busy celebrating the Skaikru’s defeat of your long-time enemy.” Clarke’s words were biting, but it wasn’t anything that Lexa hadn’t earned. Somehow, she wasn’t even a little thrown off by how well Clarke could read her face.

And with that, she turned away from Lexa, flying back towards Polis. Lexa was left scrambling to take flight and catch up, as well as scrambling to process what had just happened. When they reached the edge of the city, she knew instinctively that it was a line Clarke wasn’t going to cross. Before Lexa had a chance to figure out how to ask if she would see Clarke again, the woman in question was speaking and throwing her off balance again.

“Stop worrying about falling so much. You’ll fly much better if you can focus on the sky.”

“I don’t want to hit the ground,” Lexa admitted. Something about Clarke made her feel more vulnerable than she had in a very long time, and it terrified her, yet she was unable to close herself off regardless.

“I’ll catch you,” Clarke said easily, like it was never truly in question. When she was learning to fly, there was no one to catch her. Lexa imagined she’d probably crashed repeatedly to the ground, but she kept getting back up, and here she was, floating casually above Lexa. In the stories, falling was always a one way trip. Angels fell and stayed down with their changed beliefs, but there was no kind of gravity that could keep Clarke down.

———

A week later, Lexa saw her again. She absolutely had _not_ been staring out the window every night hoping to catch sight of Clarke, but the swooping excitement in her gut apparently hadn’t gotten the mental memo. This time, they flew a little bit farther before Clarke stopped and made her request. But, unlike last time, it wasn’t about the Skaikru.

“There’s a village, the nearest one to the Mountain, where a lot of people were taken, and now that they’re back, they don’t have enough food for them. They need help.” Lexa hadn’t been back anywhere near the Mountain, telling herself it wasn’t necessary. She wondered if it was really cowardice, holding her back from facing the star of many of her nightmares. She was facing Clarke right now, though, so at least she wasn’t entirely a coward.

“How do you know about them?” Lexa couldn’t help but ask.

“I’m learning about the rest of the world.”

“Have you heard what they’re calling you?” Lexa asked, cautiously.

“Commander of death,” Clarke spit out, bitterly. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” Except in a way, she had. The soul of Wanheda had always been meant for this.

“Have you heard the legend of the first Wanheda?”

“There were others?” Clarke asked, brow furrowed.

“They say that after the world ended, there was a girl with hair of fire and eyes of ice who healed the dying with a touch. She had power over death itself like no one else; the power not just to bring it, but also to ward it off. Wanheda is not just the bringer of death; she is the commander of it. There are people who still bear her mark, passed down by those who met her to their descendants.” Clarke let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh.

“And they think that I am her? Because I killed hundreds of people?”

“They think you’re the heir to her spirit because you killed those who no one else could, and because you can bring back the dead.” Lexa decided not to say explicitly that she agreed with them. Clarke could draw her own conclusions.

“The reapers were never dead,” she protested.

“They were to us,” Lexa replied. “And I know you saved your friend Jasper from a killing blow as well.”

“I couldn’t have done that without my mom’s help. She’s the real doctor; I just follow her instructions.”

“But she wasn’t there, and you were.” And in the end, wasn’t that what really mattered? Being there when people needed you?

———

Over the course of the next two months, it became a fairly regular experience. At first, Clarke just came to her with requests from other people, but then she started asking questions of her own as well. Their journeys got longer too, Lexa’s flying skills slowly improving, until she could hover in the air with Clarke to talk to her, on an equal playing field.

———

“Did Wanheda have wings in the legend?”

“They were said to be pure white.”

“Unlike mine.”

“Unlike yours,” Lexa agreed.

———

“Does anyone know what happened to the original Wanheda?”

“The story doesn’t have an ending.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“I’d like to think that she flew away somewhere, maybe up into the sky, but it’s more likely that she was killed by someone who wanted her power.”

“I think I’d like to keep my power,” Clarke admitted.

———

“I don’t think I’m a good person.” Not phrased as a question, but it was implied.

“Being good on the ground means something different than being good up on your Ark, or good in stories from the old world. You want to protect and save people, and isn’t that enough?”

———

“I don’t think I regret it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Maybe that’s the part that hurts the most. Knowing you made the right decision, but understanding the pain of loss too well to be okay with it.”

———

“You mentioned the symbol on Wanheda one time.” Clarke appeared to be fond of making her questions implicit instead of explicit recently.

“It’s three interconnected rings, symbolizing life, death, and the inconceivable, and her power over the connections between them all.” You couldn’t tell from the front, but when looking at her from behind, wings fully open, the swirling black streaks on Clarke’s wings revealed themselves to be said rings. “It’s on your wings.”

“The inconceivable?”

“The winds of fate that no one else can see nor understand, but that govern our lives. It’s said that she doesn’t just carry out what is meant to be, but instead can change the direction of the winds.”

“I don’t believe in fate.” It was a very Wanheda thing to say.

———

“What’s the legend of Heda?”

“What?”

“Surely you have your own as well. I want to know it.”

“The first Heda fell from the sky with black wings and black blood. There are many natblidas, but the wings were only passed onto the worthy when they received the Flame. Heda means commander, but more specifically, commander of the blood. I have the powers of destruction and control,” Lexa explained.

“How is that different from me?” Clarke asked, brow furrowed in a way that Lexa definitely didn’t think was even a little cute.

“Wanheda commands the spirit of death, choosing where it goes, regardless of what fate wants. Heda is meant to command people, command them to spill blood. No one can escape the will of Heda, nor her sword if she wishes for their blood to be spilled.”

“So Wanheda is able to tell fate to go float itself, while Heda carries out the violence of fate?”

“In a way, I suppose, but it’s more like Heda works with fate, that our will is often one and the same, at least when it comes to destruction.”

“Heda is a high pressure front, Wanheda is a big leaf blower, and everyone else is just leaves floating around.” Lexa had no idea how to unpack that, so she just nodded. “What if Heda wanted to stop destruction, though? Could she do that?”

Lexa was still looking for the answer to that question herself.

———

“It’s like a ying and yang, Heda and Wanheda.”

“A...what?”

“It’s a mirror, a balance, an equal and opposite reaction. I know you want me to submit to you to help strengthen your position, but neither is supposed to rule the other.” Lexa had never harbored any illusions that Clarke bowing to her would be anything more than a political move. Clarke didn’t truly submit to anyone, and Lexa could never truly make her do anything that she didn’t want to.

“I know.”

“Good,” Clarke said with a satisfied nod. “I have a few things to finish up, but I’ll come into Polis within a week.”

———

Apparently, one of the things she needed to finish up was her dress for the ceremony. Lexa had never seen anything like it before. It was clearly custom made for Clarke, made from a soft cotton dyed sky blue with lapis lazuli from the Boulalan people, the fabric swirling around her knees to give the impression of rippling water. The straps curved up and around her shoulders before diving down to meet at her lower back, leaving her upper back completely exposed.

It was a reckless move, and yet Lexa knew Clarke wasn’t in any real danger, because the back was open to reveal the stark black lines of a tattoo Lexa hadn’t even known she’d gotten. Her shirts usually covered up her back with just hole cut out for her wings, so she could’ve gotten it a while ago, and Lexa would be none the wiser. The interlocking ring symbol on her wings was incomplete because of the shape of them, but the tattoo completed the pattern, and a small star was inked at the center of it all. The feathers were spread wide enough to contain the bulk of the arcs of the three>circles, but the point of connection fell between her shoulder blades, off her wings. No one would dare stab Wanheda in the back, not in the symbol of her power.

She had gotten another tattoo since Lexa had last seen her as well, apparently another thing she had to finish. This one was on her neck, a leafy vine starting behind her ear and arcing down her neck to her collarbone, twining around the line of it before diving beneath the neckline of her dress. Lexa wondered how it ended.

The whole picture Clarke painted was, on the surface, that of a carefree young girl, but the steel beneath it all was undeniable. She had no visible weapons, the fabric of her skirt moving too quickly to reveal the knives cloaked between it, sheths effortlessly camouflaged in her combat boots as well. Those boots had no business matching her soft dress nor the simple braid that lay over her left shoulder, but somehow, with her wings spread wide, Wanheda painted a regal picture.

She knelt before Lexa, but her spine was straight, her wings still open. She knelt, but she didn’t defer. Lexa wondered where she’d learned to navigate politics like this.

———

The fallen were supposed to regret their actions that brought them down, but that was the thing about falling: it was a choice, because they had been given free will. It wasn’t a failure to meet expectations; it was the decision to not want to live up to them. Not a failure at all, actually, simply a shift in what one valued.

The tragedy was supposed to be that the fallen didn’t understand what they’d lost, but it could just as easily be that the yet un-fallen angels couldn’t conceive of a different world. They thought that what they had was perfect, couldn’t imagine losing it, couldn’t imagine wanting anything else, couldn’t imagine anything else being equally as good or even better. To simply lose something is sad, but to forget the beauty of what is lost is tragic. To simply be set in one’s ways is sad, but to miss opportunities because of an inability to conceive of change was tragic. To be fallen was meant to be tragic, but arguably, it was equally tragic to not understand the appeal of falling.

———

About once a year, the feathers from Lexa wings began to fall out and were replaced anew, like those of a bird. This year, though, the feathers didn’t grow back as black as the night. For the first time in the history of Heda, her wings were trimmed with snow-white feathers.

———

Titus always used to tell them that many things were simply inevitable, and they just needed to accept that. Heda could work with fate on destruction, but all else simply needed to be accepted. They had to stick to what they were meant to do, if they were to be an effective leader, instead of worrying about what they couldn’t control. Heda would die young, the clans would always be at war, blood must answer blood, anyone they got close to would be killed to be used against them. Clarke taught Lexa a word from the old world, obscure enough to be lost to those on the ground, but well known enough to appear in the books of the Skaikru, and she liked it much better.

_Ineffable._

Maybe some things were inevitable. Maybe Lexa was meant to die soon and her alliance was meant to crumble and heir hard-won peace was meant to dissolve as if it’d never been there and maybe Costia was always meant to die and Clarke was always meant to fall, and maybe they were always meant to fall in love. But there was no way to know.

If there was any kind of destiny out there, the plan was too great to be expressed in words, not meant for anyone to know or understand. Clarke told her that “great” could have different meanings and that this time, it meant it was something that was big and inconceivable, not that it was wonderful and perfect. Their future was not guaranteed to always be enjoyable, but it also wasn’t guaranteed to be much else. It wasn’t guaranteed to be suffering start to finish, either, but nothing in particular _was_ guaranteed. Who were she or Titus to say what was inevitable?

The future may be inevitable, but more importantly, it was ineffable. So why worry about what was likely to come to pass, and instead just let it come on its own? They were meant to be Heda and Wanheda, the only people with power over fate, but Lexa couldn’t control all of it, and Clarke didn’t believe in it. Wanheda’s power came from her complete lack of concern for what was _meant_ to happen, instead making what she wished to happen a reality. Because the future was ineffable, she decided what it was going to be, not accepting what anyone said was inevitable. And if Lexa wanted this peace to last, she needed to adopt a similar attitude.

Clarke had asked her one time if Heda could stop destruction, if she was built to lead more than just an army. Heda’s will was meant to line up with what was inevitable, so what if she willed for something other than just destruction to happen? If she ignored Titus’ teachings and hoped for something different, because who was he to say what was meant to be?

———

Heda was supposed to die young, but the future was ineffable. Titus shot Lexa by accident.

“No,” said Wanheda.

Lexa lived.

———

The next day, Clarke noticed Wanheda’s mark on the back of Lexa’s neck. Clarke got Heda’s mark tattooed on the back of her own.

Heda and Wanheda were no longer opposing forces, after all.

———

Some nights, she and Clarke still went flying together. Lexa could keep up much easier now, but she didn’t think she would ever be as comfortable in the sky as Clarke, and that was okay. Down in Polis, mothers told their children to look up at the night sky, hoping to spot two winged figures looping around each other playfully, their white feathers catching the fading light, their black feathers standing out in sharp contrast. The white trim of Lexa’s wings and the swirling black circles of Clarke’s was unmistakable evidence that they were different from any Heda or Wanheda that came before them, but their actions made it equally clear. No Wanheda had ever caused so much death, and no Heda had ever fought so strongly for peace instead of simply victory.

Maybe they were fallen, but it wasn’t as tragic or absolute as Lexa once thought. They never forgot what they lost, the good and the bad, but they remained open to change. They were content with what they had, but not afraid of wanting more anyways. And they had wings, so whenever they fell to the ground, they could always pick themselves back up again and take flight.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title is from ["Falling" by Florance + The Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQt6RKbYTPI) because even if all the lyrics don't all fit precisely, the vibe is _exactly_ what I'm going for  
> 2\. The falling from grace imagery that's already in the show was too good for me not to write this  
> 3\. I absolutely LOVE magical realism, so obviously I was going to use the magic prompt as an excuse to write some of it  
> 4\. If anyone shares my feelings on magical realism hmu — I could talk about it all day


End file.
